


Photo Opportunity

by Mossgreen



Series: 2770 ab urbe condita [13]
Category: 2770 ab urbe condita - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Master/Slave, Non-Sexual Slavery, Original Character(s), Period-Typical Homophobia, Photo Shoots, Photography, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Slaves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 07:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15529155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Summary: Master's company is putting out a new catalogue for the new season. Ven is one of the models.This is going to be in two parts because it got long and I wanted to postsomething. For those of you who wanted Meeting for Business to be longer, well... I hope this works for you!





	Photo Opportunity

The headquarters of Phallusy were just as impressive as ever, with a fountain playing softly in the atrium, and the interior kept cool by the portico outside. The receptionist's smile at Ven was just as pretty as the last time, though mixed with an expression of concern or pity. Rather than heading to the conference room as usual, Master led him through the building to a large room that looked reminiscent of the training room at Master's, except without the shelving. One area had several items of furniture – Ven recognised the dildo bench as being the same as the one Master had, although in polished black granite rather than the pretty veined marble. He recognised several other items as well; it made sense that Master's own collection would be provided by his own company, after all.

It was a large light room, with the walls divided into panels of varying sizes. The large panels were painted white with the smaller sections between them painted blue with a decoration of trailing vine-leaves. Somehow, Ven had expected the room to be dark and grim, or at least painted with scenes of a Bacchanalia or similar, before he realised that this maximised the light and would not detract from the focus of the pictures. 

There were two other slaves present, sitting in the corner; one female and one male. Ven gave them a quick smile, waiting just behind his master until given instructions on what he should do, or where he should go. The girl looked nervous, trying to make her slave-length stola, already below the knee, come down further. Ven surmised that she must be free-born, recently come into slavery, and still trying to come to terms with it. If she were here for the same purpose he was... he did not think she would find the next few days easy.

The other was a young man (well, young in general terms, not in comparison to most pretty boy slaves – he was still five years or so younger than Ven), and his otherwise good-looking face was marred by an expression of such utter contempt as he caught Ven's eye that Ven started. He turned his attention back to his master, thoroughly rattled.

"Slave, this is Titus Dorotheus and Vipsania Rufilla. You will obey them as you do me while we are here."

"Yes, Master." He glanced up at the two people with his master before lowering his head to them, a slave in the presence of the free.

Titus seemed to be the photographer, judging by the camera. He seemed young, his hair artfully messy. His tunic was of good quality, though crumpled – perhaps he lived alone? If he had a slave, that slave obviously was not employed in keeping his master's clothes fresh. 

The woman, Vipsania, was another kettle of fish entirely. Angular, in a spotless stola, she seemed every inch the no-nonsense Roman matron who ran her household like a military operation. Or, in this case, ran this project; Ven would not be surprised to learn that she was the one responsible for editing this catalogue, although he was somewhat surprised to learn that she would choose to work for a business like Phallusy, which was by no means all about products any slave-owner should have. The main focus of the business was in its very name, after all; it had been set up to provide items for use in the bedroom (or the playroom) and had grown from there.

"May I?" the woman, Vipsania, was saying to Master.

"Go ahead."

She stepped forward and took hold of Ven's chin. "Look at me, boy," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. 

He lifted his head, allowing her to examine his face. "Green eyes, most unusual. British blood, I suppose?"

"Yes, Madam – my mother."

"Very striking. I like the hair, too. Strip." She let his chin go and stepped back, allowing him room to remove his tunic.

Undress, in front of everyone here, before anyone was ready to...? And she was a woman, too! He could not remember the last time a woman had seen him naked, much less a free woman. Ven's hesitation caught her eye, and his master's.

"A bit of fire, I like that.” Her voice went hard. “But that does not negate the fact I gave you an order, boy."

He hastily pulled off his tunic, dropping it at his feet as he lowered his eyes again. She walked around him, studying him.

"Good physique." She turned back to his master. "Most suitable – I can see why you wanted him to model. Interesting piercings, too."

"I thought they'd add interest. I've brought a selection of jewellery to add a bit of variation." Master stepped closer, his formally-attired figure in its crisply draped toga a stark contrast to his nude slave. "You will not hesitate again, slave, or you will regret it. Do you understand?"

Ven swallowed. "Yes, Master."

"Get dressed, and wait with the others." He indicated the two slaves Ven had noted when they had entered the room.

He went to introduce himself, but was forestalled by the male. "We know who _you_ are, _cinaede_!"

The direct, lewd language made the girl flush and look away. Ven sent her an apologetic look, but she refused to meet his eye.

“Well, there's a nice introduction for you,” he said. “My name is Ven, if you'd care to use it.”

“Don't deny you are.”

“Who's denying it? I do what I am told. Life is a lot easier, that way.”

“You could always change masters, you know. The law allows for that.”

“You deal with obeying well, or you deal with it badly, but you have to deal with it one way or another. Even going to a new master isn't going to change _that_.”

“Yeah, it's not as though you have a choice, is it.”

"There's always a choice," Ven bit out, finally driven to it. "In our case, we are slaves. We can choose whether we submit graciously or whether we get forced to do it with our masters threatening the lash over every little thing. You should learn to pick your battles because if you fight your master over every small thing, it will not be at all likely you will be able to persuade him to change his mind about the big things that really matter to you." He sighed. "Yes, I am my master's fucktoy, no, I do not have a real choice in the matter. He _owns_ me, after all. We are all _instrumenta vocales_ , let's be real about it. I can submit to him or I can fight it, lose what little self-respect I have left and end up broken on the altar of... trying to prove I am something the law says I am not. I am not Ixion, to wish to be broken continuously on that wheel until there is nothing left of me but a husk. I had rather be a reed that bends than a dry stick that breaks and gets discarded."

The argument or disagreement, whatever it was, came to an abrupt end as Ven's name was called and he was peremptorily summoned by the lady, Vipsania Rufilla, clicking her fingers at him.

“You will go to Rosia Justia – over there – to have your hair and make-up done. If she tells you to disrobe, you will do so with no arguing.”

“Yes, Madam.”

Make-up? He had not expected that, somehow.

“Ven?” 

The woman – Rosia Justia? - who had spoken looked, to Ven, like an apple dumpling in human form, a mental image not at all helped by the very pretty apple-green stola she was wearing, although she had an apron over it, its pockets bulging with... the gods knew what, though he could see several brushes among the collection. 

“Hmm, you're pretty. Have you worn cosmetics before?”

“Thank you, Madam. And not really, though I've been shown how to, once, but it was a long time ago. I've never been told to – even my current master has never required that of me. Not yet, anyway.”

“Well, sit down here and let's take a look at you. This won't be like the stuff you'd be expected to wear normally. We have to make you look good under the lights, or you'll look all washed out and that won't help anyone. You've got the most gorgeous green eyes, we shall have to emphasise those, although this isn't your usual photoshoot for a fashion catalogue or anything. Perhaps some eyeliner – not all men can wear eyeliner, you know, but I think it'll suit you.”

Ven couldn't hold back a smile. “Eyeliner? I'm British, not Egyptian, madam.”

She gave a delighted shriek of laughter at the honorific. “Call me Rosia, everybody does. I'm a freedwoman, you know, you can do that without the world coming to an end. And haven't you got the most lovely smile.”

Ven was happy to let her potter around with whatever powders and paints she wished to use on him. He had been taught how to apply make-up, once, though it was for the soft lighting of a formal dinner or a master's bedroom rather than for the harsh lights of a studio. His present master seemed to want colour in his cheeks more than colour on his eyelids, at least going by the various things he'd done to Ven in the past few weeks. Even the memory made him flush, and he resolutely focussed on what was going on now, rather than what had happened in the garden in front of numerous cameras and half the known world a few short weeks ago. 

Rosia had a comb in her hand now and was fussing with his hair, although she seemed content to leave it mostly as it was.

“There,” she said, stepping back and looking critically at him. “It looks garish, admittedly, but under the lighting, it won't show, and you'll look adorable in the catalogue.”

Ven couldn't help smiling, despite feeling as though his face was buried in tons of caked-on nonsense. “I'm too old to be adorable, Madam – Rosia,” he said. 

“Rubbish! Go along with you and try not to rub your face, we don't want to smudge it! Send the mouse over.” She gave him a good-natured slap on the rump as he went, laughing, back to the others.

'The mouse' must refer to the girl – Ven still hadn't learned her name – and she looked somewhat hesitant as he passed on the message. 

“Don't worry, she won't eat you - she's very nice,” Ven assured her. “She just wants to put some make-up on, for the lighting. It won't hurt.”

Her exit left him alone with the other male slave, whose look was just as venomous as it had been earlier. 

“You don't like me because I take it up the arse, or in the mouth, because that's the use my master decides to put me to,” Ven said, tiredly, leaning against the wall. “You'd rather I fought back and got whipped for my trouble, I'm sure. I've made my choice – it's going to happen anyway, I would rather make it easy on myself and put my master in a good temper than fight him, get whipped for my trouble and then have him make what use he will of me anyway. If you think that makes me any less of a person, then you can... futue ipse!”

He would have liked the dismissal to have more consonants and be easier to spit, but it was still satisfying to tell the other to go and fuck himself. 

The shoot itself was not the most arduous work Ven had ever done, and he wasn't carrying the whole thing anyway. From what little he could work out, the master (or editor, or whoever was actually running this project) had decided the catalogue should tell some sort of story. There was an elegant young man lounging around who Ven thought had been brought in to play the 'master' to the three 'house-slaves' who were modelling the majority of the products.

“Right, before we begin, let us make one thing clear: all locks should have their keys tried _before_ being used, every single time. We do not want a repeat of what happened the last time! If you are not holding the key to the lock you are about to snap shut, you _do not_ close that lock. Are we clear on that?” Vipsania's voice cut the air like a whip, bringing forth murmurs of acknowledgement and agreement. Ven wondered precisely what _had_ happened the last time, although he thought he could guess well enough.

All the initial shots were designed to show restraints – manacles, chains, collars, leashes – ranging from the purely decorative (the girl, whose name seemed to be Elena, looked very pretty leaning against a column wearing a light collar and cuffs connected by a delicate chain that was surely more for show than meant as a serious set of restraints) to the heavy ironmongery that Ven thought was designed for use in a quarry or mine. He couldn't help the slight smirk when his bad-tempered fellow slave got chosen to model that.

Ven himself got the lighter stuff – still iron, still inescapable, but obviously supposed to be used to restrain unruly house-slaves or something. There was even an option for leather cuffs (he could guess what else _those_ would be used for – he knew from experience that slaves weren't always chained up just because they were due for a punishment).

“Look to your left, head down a bit – that's it. Hand to your mouth – you're contrite, not scared.” 

Ven complied as best he could. The chain connecting the cuffs was a little more than two feet long so not quite long enough for him to have his other arm quite straight. And didn't Titus know that contrition, for a slave, generally did involve fear? Probably not, if he had no experience of being around slaves.

“Perfect. Let's have a sitting shot to get the matching ankle cuffs – this does come as a full set, right?”

The collars varied equally as much as the restraints did. Most of them were the sort one could see every day in Rome, if one cared to look. There was no law, currently, that slaves had to wear a collar or chain when out in public, but enough masters liked their slaves to be identifiable that collars were a common sight. They ranged from leather collars that buckled closed to chains of varying weight which could be closed with a padlock, or provided with an open link that any smith could close, for a more permanent, and more refined, solution. All of them came with the option for hanging a tag from them; if an owner wanted to mark a slave as property, naturally he wanted to make it clear whose property that slave was.

“Leave that tag alone – try not to look straight at the camera.”

“Put your head down and hold your hair out of the way -we want to see the buckle on this one. Oh, that's good – let me get a long shot of that pose. Just perfect!”

“Can we get a shot with the matching cuffs? If you put your hand up to pull the neck of your tunic down a little – just like that. Wonderful! Can you look pensive for me? Fantastic – hold that a moment... Like that but a little more... Perfect!”

Ven couldn't help thinking that even despite the lack of 'please' and 'thank you', Titus would treat free models exactly the same. There was something about his manner and obvious enthusiasm for his work that meant the exclusion of 'please' was not just because his models were slaves.

The next set of photographs (and, Ven thought, the rest of the catalogue) would show the models nude. Being told to strip was nothing new for him, he still spent most of his time without clothing and Roman society was not exactly famed for being prudish. Elena, he noted from the corner of his eye, flushed a delicate shade of pink, and he wondered whether that was in response to disrobing at all, or doing so in the presence of so many people, most of whom were still clothed.

Rosia was there, flitting about, touching up smudged make-up and enhancing... well. Ven's lips were dry when she reached him. 

“I like the jewellery,” she told him, looking at his chest, and dusted his nipples with... something, to make them look darker, before her gaze wandered further south. “I don't think I need to do anything with _that_.”

“Thank the gods for that,” Ven muttered, earning himself another shriek of laughter and another good-natured slap to his bum, though this one was lighter than the first.

“Jewellery next, I think,” Vipsania was saying, once Rosia had vanished back to... wherever she was while the photographs were being taken. “You, Ven. Here.”

Titus smiled apologetically at him from beside Vipsania. Gods, the man really _hadn't_ spent much time around slaves, had he? Ven wondered how that was even possible – even a small household could find work for two or three slaves, even if the house did have 'all mod cons' as the house sellers liked to put it.

It was no surprise at all to Ven when he saw his master come over. If this next set of photographs was going to consist of what Ven thought it would, then naturally his master wanted to watch him. Master held up a tiny item that Ven took to be an earring at first, until it resolved itself – the dangling figure of Priapus did look very like an earring, but it was far heavier than anything a girl would wish to hang from her ears.

“I think, stand him by a pillar for this, don't you agree?” Master said to the flustered young man, who nodded eagerly. 

“Oh yes, much the best place. The lighting is particularly good just there.”

Ven could take a hint, and positioned himself by the indicated pillar. He was not surprised when first his left wrist, then his right, was drawn back to have a cuff secured to it, fastening him in place.

“Oh, that's good,” Titus said, and snapped another couple of pictures of the cuffs and chain, and a long shot of Ven himself, who took the opportunity to look imploringly heavenwards, feeling too much like Andromeda for comfort. 

“Here,” Master said, and briskly clipped the first weight to the ring in Ven's left nipple. “They work for clamps as well,” he added, over Ven's gasp as he let the thing drop to hang against his slave's chest.

“We'll get Rufus to demonstrate those, I think,” Vipsania said, equally briskly, making a note. Ven turned his head away to hide the smile he couldn't hide behind his hand, and the resulting pose made Titus exclaim in glee (or what sounded like glee) and take another dozen photos.

“There is a whole set of these,” Master was saying, once Titus had lowered the camera again and was paying attention. 

“Oh?”

“Priapus, which is the one there, that Ven's wearing. A phallus, naturally. Minerva's owl, Ceres' wheatsheaf, a dog...”

“May I see? Oh – they're quite heavy, for their size, aren't they?”

Titus, examining one of the little things, entirely missed Master's thin smile, although Ven saw it. _That's the whole point, sir_ , Ven thought. _How did you miss that? Unless you really_ are _that naïve! In which case, how did you get_ this _job? - and I hope you don't blush too badly when it comes to some of the other things we need pictures of_. 

Lunch, Ven was glad to discover, had been provided by outside caterers and was set up in a room nearby. He had been expecting to end up taking the others up to the cafeteria to bring food down for the free people, and not having a moment to rest before the afternoon session began. 

Elena, still a little pink, had pulled her stola back on and refused to meet anyone's eye as she ate her bread and cheese. Ven sighed, and sat back against the wall to watch as some of the larger and heavier items were moved into position. Titus apparently couldn't keep away and was here, there and everywhere, examining things and trying to frame shots without getting too much in the way, or getting other items in the shot.

Ven nearly choked on his food at the expression on the young man's face when he saw the dildo bench and eventually worked out what it was for. He reached for his beaker of water, trying not to cough too loudly and draw unwanted attention. 

“I'm glad _you_ think it's funny,” Rufus said sourly.

“Oh, piss off,” Ven told him tiredly. “If you don't want to have a civilised conversation, I don't want to talk to you.” 

He shifted to sit next to Elena. “I don't know if they're planning to do everything today, but they have such a lot of things that I don't think it likely,” he said to her in a quiet voice. “Have you ever been gagged – with a real gag, I mean, not just a hand or a bit of cloth?”

She shook her head, no. 

“Well, they can be a bit uncomfortable until you get used to them. And you won't be wearing it for long anyway – some of them might not even be worn at all, because they want pictures of the things that the company sells, and it's hard to get a good picture of a gag if it's in someone's mouth.”

His words and smile made her giggle.

“But if they do make you wear any of them, breathe through your nose and listen to what you're being told to do – the same as everything else we've done today.”

She smiled at him as he finished the last of his bread and cheese and reached for his water. 

“I like you,” she told him, so quietly he had to lean down to hear her. “Rufus doesn't like you because your master makes you do things he's uncomfortable with, but I like you, for you. You're nice. I'm sorry about your master.”

“Thank you, and that's all right. We just have to... deal with it the best we can.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations: _cinaede_ , vocative form of _cinaedus_ (when speaking to someone). Catamite, bottom, fucktoy. The term in Classical Latin is pejorative, denoting the supposed weaker/less manly party in M/M relationships. As I hope will be made clear (eventually, anyway), the historical repudiation of m/m relationships has been somewhat overturned in the past 2000 years, though it is still far more acceptable when the other person in the pairing happens to be a slave. Rome does not play by modern Western standards.
> 
>  _instrumenta vocales_ – the plural of the more usually referenced _instrumentum vocale_. The writer Varro referred to three types of farm equipment in his writings: "the tool with a voice" (slaves), "the tool that cannot speak" (the animals) and' the voiceless' (agricultural implements).
> 
>  _futue ipse_ \- fuck yourself (closest I can get to fuck you or get fucked!)


End file.
